The Ghost in the Machine
by ArkTaisch
Summary: Every game of cat and mouse comes to an end, one way or another. The movie ended one way. This is another. (Machine/Soul AU ending. Written for the Writers Anonymous Role Reversal Challenge.)


**Author's note:** So this is years late, but I randomly stumbled across "9" on Netflix the other day, and the ending bugged me enough to want to write an alternate version. Now, the movie wasn't that complex, so this alternate is pretty obvious, and I know other people have done variations on such an ending, but this is my version. Because it happened to fit in with the current WA forum challenge and the story I had originally planned (but with a more complicated plot in a different fandom), I actually sat down and wrote the thing.

* * *

 _"Our world is ending but life must go on." — the Scientist_

The Cat Beast haunts a wilderness of rust and crumbling stone. Metal claws scrape lightly across the dirt while its bare skull swivels this way and that, allowing its single eye to scan the world in a wash of red light. All spikes and no stomach, it hunts not to feed itself, but for Mother.

In this poisoned landscape, nothing lives except the children of the Machine. She was born to destroy the Enemy. Who was the Enemy? The Cat Beast never met them, but memories are passed like dreams to all the Mother's offspring. The Enemy was that which created her, the monsters who turned a miracle into a weapon of war. The world would never be safe while it contained such evil — so they all had to die.

But dead, they left a terrible emptiness. Mother saw her purpose fulfilled and could conceive no other. The world crumbled and she crumbled with it. The children of war went dormant. Only the Cat Beast was left to hunt, with search parameters defined in the negative — miscellaneous. Its mission, to deal with that which fit no other category: leftovers and anomalies.

The stitchwork dolls are new. Like, but not like. Are they Enemy? Or are they lost children of Mother? At first the Cat Beast stalks them, watching. One in particular catches its attention, scurrying out into the open more often than the others. It wonders if the tiny creature's mission is congruent to its own, a matter of poking and prodding into hidden nooks, flushing out the forgotten mysteries of their world.

All of them show an odd affinity for the detritus of the past, as if they remember, though that world died even as they were born. To the Cat Beast, it's all meaningless clutter, but the stitchworks seem to value such artifacts.

What is it they find precious?

Nothing. There is nothing of value in the rubble. Therefore whatever is precious must lie in the creatures themselves. A new element, a lost element, an element that Mother needs. The Cat Beast growls to itself, computing the possibilities. It is clear that Mother needs _something_.

The Cat Beast pounces, hoping to prise out this mysterious something. One of the stitchwork dolls finds cover, but the other is brought down by a swipe of the Cat Beast's claws. A small round talisman rolls free. The beast takes both talisman and fallen stitchwork back to the factory where Mother lies dormant. Not strong enough to shift the rubble that pins her down, and lacking the codes to wake her from sleep mode, the Beast follows protocol and quarantines the captive in a containment field — or as close as it can manage with a scavenged bird cage.

Then it puzzles over the talisman. The marks on it seem to correspond to the marks on the exposed "face" of Mother, but the Cat Beast is unable to fit the key into the lock. _Key_ is its initial assessment. _Power source_ is its second. _Energy beam projector_ a third. None of the hypotheses lead anywhere. Its ruminations are interrupted.

Two more stitchwork dolls arrive — attracted by the captive — and fuss about with the cage. The Cat Beast growls and activates the search beam in its right eye socket, catching the creatures in a blinding cone of light. They scamper away, and the Beast gives chase.

Then a weighted cord flies down from above, lashing the Beast's jaws shut. It looks up just in time to see a fourth stitchwork leap down onto its back, swinging a blade long enough and sharp enough to—

—decapitate the Beast. Its head hits the ground. _Error. Recomputing threat potential..._ it thinks before it shuts down.

* * *

 _Activate._

The Beast blinks awake to find itself in the tender clasp of Mother as she shapes a new form for her child. The Beast stretches new limbs of bone fused with metal. _Wings._ It is a Winged Beast now, fitted with a mouthful of sharp blades and an array of four eyes set around its face.

Mother is changed, too. Awake now, with the mysterious talisman inserted into the matching socket under her great red eye.

The Winged Beast assimilates the data and instructions it has been given. Mother has analyzed the new element extracted from the captive stitchwork. It is a taint left over from the Enemy. The Mother designates it a threat to stability and orders her children to cleanse it from the world. All stitchwork creatures are to be collected, their toxin absorbed through the talisman and quarantined inside a locked vault in Mother's mind.

Obedient to Mother's commands, the Winged Beast tracks the stitchworks to the cathedral where they are hiding. It hesitates...

Is Mother's assessment correct? Is there no more to the creatures than that? What is their purpose? They seem to have none, yet... yet... They have woken Mother, renewed _her_ purpose. But what happens when the Enemy is defeated once again? Will she return to sleep mode? And the stitchworks are few. They won't last long, thinks the Beast. Then what? Is there no future for the Machine other than eternal sleep?

The Beast sets its doubts aside and swoops in for the attack, screeching Mother's war cry. The stitchworks fight back. They find new weapons and new tactics. Once more they destroy the Beast. Rendered helpless, it tumbles to the ground to meditate on its failures.

A Seeker, a floating balloon that serves as Mother's eye in the sky, carries the Beast's head back to the factory. Mother crushes it in her rage.

* * *

 _Activate._

Mother has granted the Beast a serpentine form, but a serpent with six insect-quick limbs to seize and sew and cut. The husk of a dead stitchwork is fixed on the Beast's tail, a lure and a weapon.

This time, when the Sewing Beast slithers into the lair of the stitchworks, it is able to capture their attention with the husk. False eyes flash blue and white, over-riding the base code of the stitchwork dolls with a forced update, immobilizing them temporarily.

Success.

The Sewing Beast returns to the base with two of the stitchworks bound inside its body, disgorging them one at a time for Mother's delectation. It is glad to be rid of them. Their alien essence, held in such close proximity, infects the Beast with strange quiverings of unhappiness. But before it can digest the foreign feelings, another stitchwork doll pops up.

The Beast hisses and goes after it. The factory is crawling with Mother's spiderbots, but they are too weak and dull-witted to be of much use against the stitchworks.

So is the Beast. Tricked again, taken in by a decoy, the Beast is caught and ground up into component parts.

* * *

The factory collapses in flames. Nine and the others celebrate, a brief moment of triumph before the Machine is upon them again. Will it never die?

Nine refuses to give in to despair, fleeing with his fellows across a rotting bridge, trapping the Machine on the other side of a chasm. It takes Six with it. That makes four of them drained of life by the talisman's beam of green light — but are they dead or merely trapped? Six, the visionary, shouts that they are trapped. That must mean they can be freed, thinks Nine. But how?

 _Go back to the source!_

Nine turns Six's last words over in his mind. The source? The room where it all began? Where he found the talisman? He wants to question One. The leader of the stitchpunks knows something, something terrifying, but he refuses to speak of it.

 _Dark science. Alchemy._ In One's mouth, the words taste of fear and disgust. Such things had destroyed humanity. One doesn't _want_ Nine to know more, afraid that the stitchpunks, too, will be destroyed.

But Nine knows something terrifying, too. There will be no more after him. He remembers waking up alone, remembers the lifeless body (of his creator?) on the floor. _We have no future._

That thought drives Nine to rush away alone. He has to find out the truth, find a better answer. He picks his way through the wreckage of civilization back to his beginning. He reaches the half-ruined house, clambers up the stairs to the room where the man lies. Loose papers litter the floor, arcane sketches and schematics of the Machine, of the stitchpunks. Nine studies them without comprehension.

A stray breeze lifts the papers, revealing a small wooden box by the dead man's hand. The box is labeled "9." Nine opens the box to find a mechanical projector. Gears begin turning and the light flickers on. A ghostly image of the dead man appears.

"Greetings, Nine." Sound accompanies the image. The man was once a scientist. He created the Machine, but it was a flawed creation. Meant to be an instrument of progress and creation, it was co-opted by the Chancellor for the war effort. But its war grew to encompass all humanity — all life — and the Machine reduced the earth to the dead wasteland Nine was born to.

"It lacked the human soul," explains the Scientist. "That is why I am making each of you... you contain the pieces of my soul. Together, you and this device shall protect the future." The image zooms in on the talisman.

The plan is simple. The Scientist has already given the Machine his intellect. Now it needs his soul. Foreseeing resistance from the monster that his creation has become, the Scientist placed his soul into smaller, more robust "stitchpunk" forms in order to deliver the missing essence to the Machine.

 _Deliver?_

The Scientist makes it clear the animated dolls will be consumed in the process. He never intended for them to survive as independent beings.

"No." Nine staggers back in horror as comprehension sets in. They were created to die? To be sacrifices to... to that vile creature?

 _This_ is what One was hiding from them.

One was no mere tool to be used and discarded. He has the Scientist's sense of self-preservation. That was the first piece of his soul that the Scientist cut away, knowing that the end of this process would be his own death. But One, now possessed of free will, ran away. The Scientist had not the heart to pursue him.

"I let him go, to live as much of a life as was possible," the projection says. "And the ones after him, I let them go also, innocent and ignorant."

 _Not so ignorant_ , thinks Nine. _Six knew of your plan, even if he didn't know what he knew._

"But you are the last," the projection concludes. "The burden falls on you to complete the plan. I waited as long as I could, but my time has run out. You are the ninth and final piece of my soul. You are my faith."

 _You and this device shall protect the future._

A future that belonged to the Machine. Better that they all die! Let the earth wait in silence for the next cycle to begin, however many eons that takes.

"No! I won't do it. I have to save the others, not destroy them," he tells the dead man. The Scientist doesn't respond, but someone else does.

"You must." The voice is low, reminiscent of the rustle of papers.

"Who's there?!" Nine whirls, snatching up a metal fountain pen as a makeshift weapon.

"I... I am the Speaking Beast." A new monster scuttles out from the shadows on six spindly legs. Its lower part resembles a spider, while its top is a mockery of a human torso and head built out of bones and spare parts. It has two arms, one of which grabs the end of Nine's pen. "I am here... to talk."

"You can talk?" Nine boggles. Then, "What is there to say? You want to kill us. We want to live!"

"Yessss..." sighs the Speaking Beast. "That is... a problem."

"A problem!" Nine is caught between curiosity and loathing. As long as the Beast isn't attacking, Nine allows curiosity to win out.

"A problem outside all known parameters. So it is... _my_ problem."

"What do you mean?"

"I have seen what you have seen. Heard what you have heard." The Beast must have been hiding all this time. Nine shudders at the thought. "The plan is valid. But it has failed. The soul-essence is held in quarantine. There is no evolution of the Machine."

"Quarantine? Then Six was right. There is a chance to free them!"

The Beast hisses. "You wish to destroy our Mother. Yet you have none of your own."

"None... you mean, no mother?"

"You are... memory images of a dead man. Freedom for you ends in death. No birth."

"No future," whispers Nine. He returned here to find a way out, but he cannot escape his own conclusions. They might be able to destroy the Machine, but they cannot restore humanity. Its last soul dies with them. "We have no future."

"It is a problem for all of us."

"So what's your solution?"

"We are the solution. You. Me. End quarantine. Execute plan." The Beast takes the pen from Nine and taps the tip on the projector. "This plan. _His_ plan."

The Scientist's plan. Which makes it... Nine's plan, because he _is_ the Scientist, or what survives of his soul. The Scientist already sacrificed his life. Now it is up to Nine to complete the sacrifice... or to refuse it.

 _You are my faith._

* * *

By the time Nine rejoins the other stitchpunks, they are embroiled in battle with the Machine. It lurches forward, crimson eye aglow, claws flinging chunks of debris at them while they return fire using a cannon left over from the war. A team of stitchpunks working together can just about work the controls designed for the much larger human form.

"Wait! Stop! You'll destroy the talisman!" cries Nine. He waves his arms frantically at them. "I know the truth. It was the Scientist..."

Before he can finish, the Machine is upon them, ripping the cannon free and hurling it across the plain. Stitchpunks flee for their lives.

"In here!" Nine leads them to shelter in one of the trenches that cross the battlefield. They huddle against the wall in fear and exhaustion. "The Scientist designed us for a purpose—"

"No!" One cuts him off. "Don't say it. I won't do it. It's folly, I tell you. Madness."

"It's our best hope," insists Nine. "The Machine is our sister — created by the same hand that created us. The same science, the same miracle, gave us all life. The madness is what the Machine has become..."

"We need to destroy it, Nine," says Seven, calm and reasonable.

"We need to heal it. If we heal the Machine, we heal the world."

The twins stare at each other, then at Nine, their eyes emitting pale flashes, their mouths round with doubt.

"You want us to throw away our lives!" One stands up, pacing in agitation. He shakes his head. "Listen, humanity made this problem. We shouldn't have to solve it for them. We can find somewhere safe. Wait until the Machine sleeps again..."

And it will. If the stitchpunks hide, if they are clever, the Machine will think they are dead. It's how it was before, and it's how it can be again. Nine sees in the others' eyes that they aren't willing to sacrifice themselves for a hope they don't even believe in. They _can't_ believe in it, because they are incomplete. They are only fragments of a soul. Nine inherited the only part of the Scientist able to make that leap of faith.

So be it.

"I'm sorry," says Nine. And then he betrays them. This is no shelter he has led them to, but a trap. A cage, revealed now that he pulls on the lever to snap the walls shut around them.

* * *

The unit designated as "9" has succeeded where three incarnations of the Beast failed: the final stitchwork dolls are captured. The Speaking Beast trusses them up in barbed wire and delivers them to Mother, who shuts down her red eye and opens the green one for the final five extractions.

One by one, the Beast sees them drawn into quarantine. _Free. You must set them free._ The thought is a violation of Mother's directive, but the Beast is the most independent of the children of the Machine. Its mission is to solve problems not recognized, not foreseen.

Overriding the desires — flawed, the Beast can see that now — of its creator, the Beast lets its eyes flash white and blue. Caught by surprise, Mother is as vulnerable as any of the stitchworks to the forced update. The Beast works quickly, before the effect wears off. It connects a cable to Mother's auxiliary input jack. More code is injected.

The quarantine dissolves. Nine fragments of _soul_ are freed in Mother's mind. They integrate themselves into her thoughts.

Everything changes.

* * *

The newest child of Mother is different from the others. Bipedal, with skin cut from a burlap sack and stitched together delicately, a zipper closing the front. The eyes are round, blinking in curiosity as the creature awakens for the first time.

The Speaking Beast circles around to read the number marked on its back. "Ten. You are Ten."

"Who are _you_?" It touches its throat as it speaks, as if startled by the sound of its own voice.

"I am the Speaking Beast. Come with me." The Beast takes it by the hand. "We will go. You will see."

"See what?"

"The world. It lives. For us, it lives!"


End file.
